Morning's Meadow

This is an old one that I never worked on. Some may remember a similar photo I posted of this from last year. The first post showed more of the sky, but you could barely tell that there were so many wildflowers in the field.

This was an extremely tough exposure as I was looking at the sun as it rose over the mountain. I hiked out to this meadow being eaten alive by mosquitoes, only to find I had left my GND's in my tent:) So this is a blend of 3 exposures. C&C Appreciated.

Three-Fingered Jack, as seen from Santiam Lake in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness.

Canon EOS 20d
Tokina 12-24mm f/4 DX @ 18mm
ISO 100 : f/16 : 1/40 sec
Polarizer

The mosquitoes over there are horrid! - as I can attest... I really like the field of blossoms spreading out from front to back..

This is a nice shot Chris. The different tones of foreground green are very appealing. Looks like those darn pine beetles are getting to some of the trees up there.

It is a nice shot but I do have a bit of a nit. It just seems like the hazy hills don't quite fit with the rest of the image. Kind of distracting IMHO!

That certainly does look like a tough exposure, good job on the blend. I agree with Erik that the bottom and top don't blend well, but I actually prefer the trees/hills/sky. The sky is much more dramatic than the meadow, and I'm not sure that the meadow adds enough to pull its weight. Lots more flowers, some leading lines, or maybe scooting much closer to some of the flowers to anchor the foreground would improve it to my eye.

I'm in agreement with John on this one. I find the highlights a little blown out. Do you use highlight warnings on your camera? That said, this is a tough exposure situation.

thanks for the comments so far. I was a little torn about the blending and the hills. The catch was that there was some fog on the other side of the trees (or smoke) which made it look like haloing from an exposure blend. You can kind of see where I blended the top of the treeline back to the darker exposure and start to make out the fog.
I struggled with this composition after I saw the image as I couldn't see much through the viewfinder staring into the sun. I was bummed to see the horizon right smack in the middle. I did pay attention to the highlight warning, but decided that the blown out highlights in the sun itself would be a find compromise. ah well.
I'd love to shoot this with my 50D. Much better visibility in the viewfinder and the LCD screen :)

Definitely tough lighting conditions Chris, you did an admirable job given the situation.
I much prefer your ESS post, which I assume is in the same vacinity. That shot is fantastic!

What Joe said..
JG

I'm surprised that, given you are blending three exposures, the sky has some blown highlights. Actually I don't think it's a deal breaker, but still I expect that the sky exposure would have captured all those bright tones. Regarding the comp issues that John wrote of, the image seems R heavy to me as the mountains are centered with a feeling of weight from the more heavily textured part of the meadow on the R edge. So that makes me wonder how this would have looked if you had placed the peaks left of center. Just a thought.

Thanks guys. I think I'm going to let this one go. It's been too much work so far, and I'll take it as a reminder of why I shouldn't forget my GND's next time :)